And so we are off, South West Coast Path here we come – Minehead to Porlock

The day started well; my phone did a factory reset so wiped everything but the sun was shining. We had just finished the lovely flat 58 mile Somerset Coast Path and now were looking up at North Hill and thinking yeap this is going to be hard; couldn’t there be an easier start! But on this occasion looks can be deceiving and the path follows the coast zig zagging slowly up the hill.

But before that you follow a lovely flat path past a sign, you can see here, only 629.5 miles to Poole and then you realise this might take longer than first thought and is a bit of a serious undertaking. I don’t know why but really hadn’t thought about this before.

It appears now as I look back on it I don’t take pictures when going uphill, probably too busy gasping for breath but once you get to the top of North Hill, and have chosen the rugged coast path or coast path, you can enjoy the view back towards Minehead. And after a few more bits of up and down Bossington comes into view.

A grassy track leads you across the back of the beach past loads of weird dead looking trees before you head on, nice and level, although stones bit hard for dogs paws and human feet, onwards toward Porlock Weir to the Ship Inn and cold white wine.

The guide-book said 8.9 miles/4.5 hours/1824 ascent our tracker said 11.46 miles/4.19 minutes/1240 ascent. Not sure what happened there as followed all the signs, strange.